4625 
1902 


PRINCETON 
FOR  THE 
NATION'S 
SERVICE 

AN  ADDRESS  DELIVERED  ON 
THE  OCCASION  OF  HIS  IN- 
AUGURATION AS  PRESIDENT 
OF  PRINCETON  UNIVERSITY 
ON  OCTOBER  TWENTY-FIFTH 
MCMII 

BY 

WOODROW    WILSON 

PH.D.,    LITT.D.,    LL.D. 


PRINCETON 

PRINTED      NOT       PUBLISHED 
M    C    M    I    I    I 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA: 

SANTA  BARBARA 


PRINCETON 

FOR    THE  NATION'S 

SERVICE 


INAUGURAL 
ADDRESS 


PRINCETON 

FOR   THE  NATION'S 

SERVICE 

SIX  years  ago  I  had  the  honor  of 
standing  in  this  place  to  speak  of 
the  memories  with  which  Prince- 
ton men  heartened  themselves  as 
they  looked  back  a  century  and  a  half  to 
the  founding  of  their  college.  To-day  my 
task  is  more  difficult,  more  delicate. 
Standing  here  in  the  light  of  those  older 
days,  we  must  now  assess  our  present  pur- 
poses and  powers  and  sketch  the  creed  by 
which  we  shall  be  willing  to  live  in  the 
days  to  come.  We  are  but  men  of  a 
single  generation  in  the  long  life  of  an  in- 
stitution which  will  still  be  young  when 
we  are  dead,  but  while  we  live  her  life  is 
in  us.  What  we  conceive  she  conceives. 


Princeton  for  the  Nation  s  Service 

In  planning  for  Princeton,  moreover,  we 
are  planning  for  the  country.  The  service 
of  institutions  of  learning  is  not  private 
but  public.  It  is  plain  what  the  nation 
needs  as  its  affairs  grow  more  and  more 
complex  and  its  interests  begin  to  touch 
the  ends  of  the  earth.  It  needs  efficient 
and  enlightened  men.  The  universities  of 
the  country  must  take  part  in  supplying 
them. 

American  universities  serve  a  free  nation 
whose  progress,  whose  power,  whose  pros- 
perity, whose  happiness,  whose  integrity 
depend  upon  individual  initiative  and  the 
sound  sense  and  equipment  of  the  rank 
and  file.  Their  history,  moreover,  has  set 
them  apart  to  a  character  and  service  of 
their  own.  They  are  not  mere  seminaries 
of  scholars.  They  never  can  be.  Most 
of  them,  the  greatest  of  them  and  the  most 
distinguished,  were  first  of  all  great  colleges 
before  they  became  universities  ;  and  their 
task  is  two-fold  :  the  production  of  a  great 
body  of  informed  and  thoughtful  men  and 
the  production  of  a  small  body  of  trained 

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Princeton  for  the  Nation's  Service 

scholars  and  investigators.  It  is  one  of 
their  functions  to  take  large  bodies  of 
young  men  up  to  the  places  of  outlook 
whence  the  world  of  thought  and  affairs  is 
to  be  viewed ;  it  is  another  of  their  func- 
tions to  take  some  men,  a  little  more 
mature,  a  little  more  studious,  men  self- 
selected  by  aptitude  and  industry,  into  the 
quiet  libraries  and  laboratories  where  the 
close  contacts  of  study  are  learned  which 
yield  the  world  new  insight  into  the  pro- 
cesses of  nature,  of  reason,  and  of  the 
human  spirit.  These  two  functions  are 
not  to  be  performed  separately,  but  side  by 
side,  and  are  to  be  informed  with  one 
spirit,  the  spirit  of  enlightenment,  a  spirit 
of  learning  which  is  neither  superficial  nor 
pedantic,  which  values  life  more  than  it 
values  the  mere  acquisitions  of  the  mind. 

Universities,  we  have  learned  to  think, 
include  within  their  scope,  when  complete, 
schools  of  law,  of  medicine,  of  theology, 
and  of  those  more  recondite  mechanic 
arts,  such  as  the  use  of  electricity,  upon 
which  the  skilled  industry  of  the  modern 


Princeton  for  the  Nation  s  Service 

world  is  built  up  ;  and,  though  in  dwelling 
upon  such  an  association  of  schools  as  of 
the  gist  of  the  matter  in  our  definitions  of 
a  university,  we  are  relying  upon  historical 
accidents  rather  than  upon  essential  prin- 
ciples for  our  conceptions,  they  are  acci- 
dents which  show  the  happy  order  and 
system  with  which  things  often  come  to 
pass.  Though  the  university  may  dis- 
pense with  professional  schools,  profes- 
sional schools  may  not  dispense  with  the 
university.  Professional  schools  have  no- 
where their  right  atmosphere  and  associa- 
tion except  where  they  are  parts  of  a 
university  and  share  its  spirit  and  method. 
They  must  love  learning  as  well  as  profes- 
sional success  in  order  to  have  their  perfect 
usefulness.  This  is  not  the  verdict  of  the 
universities  merely  but  of  the  professional 
men  themselves,  spoken  out  of  hard  expe- 
rience of  the  facts  of  business.  It  was  but 
the  other  day  that  the  Society  for  the 
Promotion  of  Engineering  Education  in- 
dorsed the  opinion  of  their  president,  Mr. 
Eddy,  that  the  crying  need  of  the  engi- 
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Princeton  for  the  Nation  s  Service 

neering  profession  was  men  whose  techni- 
cal knowledge  and  proficiency  should  rest 
upon  a  broad  basis  of  general  culture  which 
should  make  them  free  of  the  wider  worlds 
of  learning  and  experience,  which  should 
give  them  largeness  of  view,  judgment, 
and  easy  knowledge  of  men.  The  modern 
world  nowhere  shows  a  closeted  profession 
shut  in  to  a  narrow  round  of  technical 
functions  to  which  no  knowledge  of  the 
outside  world  need  ever  penetrate.  What- 
ever our  calling,  our  thoughts  must  often 
be  afield  among  men  of  many  kinds, 
amidst  interests  as  various  as  the  phases  of 
modern  life.  The  managing  minds  of  the 
world,  even  the  efficient  working  minds  of 
the  world,  must  be  equipped  for  a  mastery 
whose  chief  characteristic  is  adaptability, 
play,  an  initiative  which  transcends  the 
bounds  of  mere  technical  training.  Tech- 
nical schools  whose  training  is  not  built  up 
on  the  foundations  of  a  broad  and  general 
discipline  cannot  impart  this.  The  stuff 
they  work  upon  must  be  prepared  for 
them  by  processes  which  produce  fibre 


Princeton  for  the  Nation's  Service 

and  elasticity,  and  their  own  methods  must 
be  shot  through  with  the  impulses  of  the 
university. 

It  is  this  that  makes  our  age  and  our 
task  so  interesting :  this  complex  interde- 
pendence and  interrelationship  of  all  the 
processes  which  prepare  the  mind  for  ef- 
fectual service :  this  necessity  that  the 
merchant  and  the  financier  should  have 
travelled  minds,  the  engineer  a  knowledge 
of  books  and  men,  the  lawyer  a  wide  view 
of  affairs,  the  physician  a  familiar  acquaint- 
ance with  the  abstract  data  of  science,  and 
that  the  closeted  scholar  should  throw  his 
windows  open  to  the  four  quarters  of  the 
world.  Every  considerable  undertaking 
has  come  to  be  based  on  knowledge,  on 
thoughtfulness,  on  the  masterful  handling 
of  men  and  facts.  The  university  must 
stand  in  the  midst,  where  the  roads  of 
thought  and  knowledge  interlace  and 
cross,  and,  building  upon  some  coign  of 
vantage,  command  them  all. 

It  has  happened  that  throughout  two 
long  generations, — long  because  filled  with 

10 


Princeton  for  the  Nation  s  Service 

the  industrial  and  social  transformation  of 
the  world, — the  thought  of  studious  men 
has  been  bent  upon  devising  methods  by 
which  special  aptitudes  could  be  devel- 
oped, detailed  investigations  carried  for- 
ward, inquiry  broadened  and  deepened  to 
meet  the  scientific  needs  of  the  age,  knowl- 
edge extended  and  made  various  and  yet 
exact  by  the  minute  and  particular  re- 
searches of  men  who  devoted  all  the  en- 
ergies of  their  minds  to  a  single  task.  And 
so  we  have  gained  much,  though  we  have 
also  lost  much  which  must  be  recovered. 
We  have  gained  immensely  in  knowledge 
but  we  have  lost  system.  We  have  ac- 
quired an  admirable,  sober  passion  for  ac- 
curacy. Our  pulses  have  been  quickened, 
moreover,  by  discovery.  The  world  of 
learning  has  been  transformed.  No  study 
has  stood  still.  Scholars  have  won  their 
fame,  not  by  erudition,  but  by  exploration, 
the  conquest  of  new  territory,  the  addition 
of  infinite  detail  to  the  map  of  knowledge. 
And  so  we  have  gained  a  splendid  profi- 
ciency in  investigation.  We  know  the 


Princeton  for  the  Nation's  Service 

right  methods  of  advanced  study.  We 
have  made  exhaustive  records  of  the  ques- 
tions waiting  to  be  answered,  the  doubts 
waiting  to  be  resolved,  in  every  domain  of 
inquiry ;  thousands  of  problems  once  un- 
solved, apparently  insoluble,  we  have  re- 
duced to  their  elements  and  settled,  and 
their  answers  have  been  added  to  the  com- 
monplaces of  knowledge.  But,  meanwhile, 
what  of  the  preliminary  training  of  special- 
ists, what  of  the  general  foundations  of 
knowledge,  what  of  the  general  equipment 
of  mind  which  all  men  must  have  who  are 
to  serve  this  busy,  this  sophisticated  gen- 
eration ? 

Probably  no  one  is  to  blame  for  the 
neglect  of  the  general  into  which  we  have 
been  led  by  our  eager  pursuit  of  the  par- 
ticular. Every  age  has  lain  under  the  re- 
proach of  doing  but  one  thing  at  a  time,  of 
having  some  one  signal  object  for  the  sake 
of  which  other  things  were  slighted  or  ig- 
nored. But  the  plain  fact  is,  that  we  have 
so  spread  and  diversified  the  scheme  of 
knowledge  in  our  day  that  it  has  lost  co- 


Princeton  for  the  Nation  s  Service 

herence.  We  have  dropped  the  threads  of 
system  in  our  teaching.  And  system  be- 
gins at  the  beginning.  We  must  find  the 
common  term  for  college  and  university ; 
and  those  who  have  great  colleges  at  the 
heart  of  the  universities  they  are  trying  to 
develop  are  under  a  special  compulsion  to 
find  it.  Learning  is  not  divided.  Its 
kingdom  and  government  are  centered, 
unitary,  single.  The  processes  of  instruc- 
tion which  fit  a  large  body  of  young  men 
to  serve  their  generation  with  powers  re- 
leased and  fit  for  great  tasks  ought  also  to 
serve  as  the  initial  processes  by  which 
scholars  and  investigators  are  made.  They 
ought  to  be  but  the  first  parts  of  the  method 
by  which  the  crude  force  of  untrained  men 
is  reduced  to  the  expert  uses  of  civilization. 
There  may  come  a  day  when  general  study 
will  be  no  part  of  the  function  of  a  univer- 
sity, when  it  shall  have  been  handed  over, 
as  some  now  talk  of  handing  it  over,  to  the 
secondary  schools,  after  the  German  fash- 
ion ;  but  that  day  will  not  be  ours,  and  I, 
for  one,  do  not  wish  to  see  it  come.  The 

'3 


Princeton  for  the  Nation's  Service 

masters  who  guide  the  youngsters  en- 
gaged in  general  studies  are  very  useful 

o    &  o  * 

neighbors  for  those  who  prosecute  detailed 
inquiries  and  devote  themselves  to  special 
tasks.  No  investigator  can  afford  to  keep 
his  doors  shut  against  the  comradeships 
of  the  wide  world  of  effort  and  of 
thought. 

To  have  a  great  body  of  undergraduates 
crowding  our  class-rooms  and  setting  the 
pace  of  our  lives  must  always  be  a  very 
wholesome  thing.  These  young  fellows, 
who  do  not  mean  to  make  finished  schol- 
ars of  themselves,  but  who  do  mean  to 
learn  from  their  elders,  now  at  the  outset 
of  their  lives,  what  the  thoughts  of  the 
world  have  been  and  its  processes  of  pro- 
gress, in  order  that  they  may  start  with 
.  light  about  them,  and  not  doubt  or  dark- 
ness, learning  in  the  brief  span  of  four  years 
what  it  would  else  take  them  half  a  life- 
time to  discover  by  mere  contact  with  men, 
must  teach  us  the  real  destiny  with  which 
knowledge  came  into  the  world.  Its  mis- 
sion is  enlightenment  and  edification,  and 

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Princeton  for  the  Nation  s  Service 

these  young  gentlemen  shall  keep  us  in 
mind  of  this. 

The  age  has  hurried  us,  has  shouldered 
us  out  of  the  old  ways,  has  bidden  us  be 
moving  and  look  to  the  cares  of  a  practical 
generation  ;  and  we  have  suffered  ourselves 
to  be  a  little  disconcerted.  No  doubt  we 
were  once  pedants.  It  is  a  happy  thing 
that  the  days  have  gone  by  when  the  texts 
we  studied  loomed  bigger  to  our  view  than 
the  human  spirit  which  underlay  them. 
But  there  are  some  principles  of  which  we 
must  not  let  go.  We  must  not  lose  sight 
of  that  fine  conception  of  a  general  training 
which  led  our  fathers,  in  the  days  when 
men  knew  how  to  build  great  states,  to 
build  great  colleges  also  to  sustain  them. 
No  man  who  knows  the  world  has  ever 
supposed  that  a  day  would  come  when 
every  young  man  would  seek  a  college 
training.  The  college  is  not  for  the  ma- 
jority who  carry  forward  the  common 
labor  of  the  world,  nor  even  for  those  who 
work  at  the  skilled  handicrafts  which  mul- 
tiply the  conveniences  and  the  luxuries  of 
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Princeton  for  the  Nation's  Service 

the  complex  modern  life.  It  is  for  the  mi- 
nority who  plan,  who  conceive,  who  super- 
intend, who  mediate  between  group  and 
group,  and  who  must  see  the  wide  stage  as  a 
whole.  Democratic  nations  must  be  served 
in  this  wise  no  less  than  those  whose  leaders 
are  chosen  by  birth  and  privilege ;  and  the 
college  is  no  less  democratic  because  it  is 
for  those  who  play  a  special  part.  I  know 
that  there  are  men  of  genius  who  play  these 
parts  of  captaincy  and  yet  have  never  been 
in  the  classrooms  of  a  college,  whose  only 
school  has  been  the  world  itself.  The 
world  is  an  excellent  school  for  those  who 
have  vision  and  self-discipline  enough  to 
use  it.  It  works  in  this  wise,  in  part,  upon 
us  all.  Raw  lads  are  made  men  of  by  the 
mere  sweep  of  their  lives  through  the  vari- 
ous school  of  experience.  It  is  this  very 
sweep  of  life  that  we  wish  to  bring  to  the 
consciousness  of  young  men  by  the  shorter 
processes  of  the  college.  We  have  seen 
the  adaptation  take  place ;  we  have  seen 
crude  boys  made  fit  in  four  years  to  be- 
come men  of  the  world. 

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Princeton  for  the  Nation 's  Service 

Every  man  who  plays  a  leading  or  con- 
ceiving part  in  any  affair  must  somehow 
get  this  schooling  of  his  spirit,  this  quick- 
ening and  adaptation  of  his  perceptions. 
He  must  either  spread  the  process  through 
his  lifetime  and  get  it  by  an  extraordinary 
gift  of  insight  and  upon  his  own  initiative, 
or  else  he  must  get  it  by  the  alchemy  of 
mind  practiced  in  college  halls.  We  ought 
distinctly  to  set  forth  in  our  philosophy 
of  this  matter  the  difference  between  a 
man's  preparation  for  the  specific  and  defi- 
nite tasks  he  is  to  perform  in  the  world 
and  that  general  enlargement  of  spirit  and 
release  of  powers  which  he  shall  need  if 
his  task  is  not  to  crush  and  belittle  him. 
When  we  insist  that  a  certain  general  edu- 
cation shall  precede  all  special  training 
which  is  not  merely  mechanical  in  its  scope 
and  purpose,  we  mean  simply  that  every 
mind  needs  for  its  highest  serviceability  a 
certain  preliminary  orientation,  that  it  may 
get  its  bearings  and  release  its  perceptions 
for  a  wide  and  catholic  view.  We  must 
deal  in  college  with  the  spirits  of  men,  not 

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Princeton  for  the  Nation's  Service 

with  their  fortunes.  Here,  in  history  and 
philosophy  and  literature  and  science,  are 
the  experiences  of  the  world  summed  up. 
These  are  but  so  many  names  which  we 
give  to  the  records  of  what  men  have  done 
and  thought  and  comprehended.  If  we 
be  not  pedants,  if  we  be  able  to  get  at  the 
spirit  of  the  matter,  we  shall  extract  from 
them  the  edification  and  enlightenment  as 
of  those  who  have  gone  the  long  journey 
of  experience  with  the  race. 

There  are  two  ways  of  preparing  a  young 
man  for  his  life  work.  One  is  to  give  him 
the  skill  and  special  knowledge  which  shall 
make  a  good  tool,  an  excellent  bread- 
winning  tool,  of  him  ;  and  for  thousands 
of  young  men  that  way  must  be  followed. 
It  is  a  good  way.  It  is  honorable.  It  is 
indispensable.  But  it  is  not  for  the  col- 
lege, and  it  never  can  be.  The  college 
should  seek  to  make  the  men  whom  it 
receives  something  more  than  excellent 
servants  of  a  trade  or  skilled  practitioners 
of  a  profession.  It  should  give  them  elas- 
ticity of  faculty  and  breadth  of  vision,  so 

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Princeton  for  the  Nation' s  Service 

that  they  shall  have  a  surplus  of  mind  to 
expend,  not  upon  their  profession  only, 
for  its  liberalization  and  enlargement,  but 
also  upon  the  broader  interests  which  lie 
about  them,  in  the  spheres  in  which  they 
are  to  be,  not  breadwinners  merely,  but 
citizens  as  well,  and  in  their  own  hearts, 
where  they  are  to  grow  to  the  stature  of 
real  nobility.  It  is  this  free  capital  of  mind 
the  world  most  stands  in  need  of, — this 
free  capital  that  awaits  investment  in  un- 
dertakings, spiritual  as  well  as  material, 
which  advance  the  race  and  help  all  men 
to  a  better  life. 

And  are  we  to  do  this  great  thing  by  the 
old  discipline  of  Greek,  Latin,  mathemat- 
ics, and  English  ?  The  day  has  gone  by 
when  that  is  possible.  The  circle  of  lib- 
eral studies  is  too  much  enlarged,  the  area 
of  general  learning  is  too  much  extended, 
to  make  it  any  longer  possible  to  make 
these  few  things  stand  for  all.  Science  has 
opened  a  new  world  of  learning,  as  great 
as  the  old.  The  influence  of  science  has 
broadened  and  transformed  old  themes  of 

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Princeton  for  the  Nation  s  Service 

study  and  created  new,  and  all  the  bound- 
aries of  knowledge  are  altered.  In  the 
days  of  our  grandfathers  all  learning  was 
literary,  was  of  the  book;  the  phenomena 
of  nature  were  brought  together  under  the 
general  terms  of  an  encyclopaedic  Natural 
Philosophy.  Now  the  quiet  rooms  where 
once  a  few  students  sat  agaze  before  a  long 
table  at  which,  with  a  little  apparatus  in 
front  of  him,  a  lecturer  discoursed  of  the 
laws  of  matter  and  of  force,  are  replaced  by 
great  laboratories,  physical,  chemical,  bio- 
logical, in  which  the  pupil's  own  direct 
observation  and  experiment  take  the  place 
of  the  conning  of  mere  theory  and  general- 
ization, and  men  handle  the  immediate 
stuff  of  which  nature  is  made.  Museums 
of  natural  history,  of  geology,  of  paleon- 
tology, stretch  themselves  amidst  our  lec- 
ture rooms,  for  demonstration  of  what  we 
say  of  the  life  and  structure  of  the  globe. 
The  telescope,  the  spectroscope,  not  the 
text-book  merely,  are  our  means  of  teach- 
ing the  laws  and  movements  of  the  sky. 
An  age  of  science  has  transmuted  specula- 


Princeton  for  the  Nation's  Service 

tion  into  knowledge  and  doubled  the  do- 
minion of  the  mind.  Heavens  and  earth 
swing  together  in  a  new  universe  of  knowl- 
edge. And  so  it  is  impossible  that  the 
old  discipline  should  stand  alone,  to  serve 
us  as  an  education.  With  it  alone  we 
should  get  no  introduction  into  the  mod- 
ern world  either  of  thought  or  affairs.  The 
mind  of  the  modern  student  must  be  car- 
ried through  a  wide  range  of  studies  in 
which  science  shall  have  a  place  not  less 
distinguished  than  that  accorded  literature, 
philosophy,  or  politics. 

But  we  must  observe  proportion  and 
remember  what  it  is  that  we  seek.  We 
seek  in  our  general  education,  not  univer- 
sal knowledge,  but  the  opening  up  of  the 
mind  to  a  catholic  appreciation  of  the  best 
achievements  of  men  and  the  best  pro- 
cesses of  thought  since  days  of  thought 
set  in.  We  seek  to  apprise  young  men  of 
what  has  been  settled  and  made  sure  of, 
of  the  thinking  that  has  been  carried 
through  and  made  an  end  of.  We  seek  to 
set  them  securely  forward  at  the  point  at 


Princeton  for  the  Nation  s  Service 

which  the  mind  of  the  race  has  definitively 
arrived,  and  save  them  the  trouble  of 
attempting  the  journey  over  again,  so  that 
they  may  know  from  the  outset  what  rela- 
tion their  own  thought  and  effort  bear  to 
what  the  world  has  already  done.  We 
speak  of  the  "  disciplinary "  studies 
through  which  a  boy  is  put  in  his  school 
days  and  during  the  period  of  his  intro- 
duction into  the  full  privileges  of  college 
work,  having  in  our  thought  the  mathe- 
matics of  arithmetic,  elementary  algebra, 
and  geometry,  the  Greek  and  Latin  texts 
and  grammars,  the  elements  of  English 
and  of  French  or  German ;  but  a  better, 
truer  name  for  them  were  to  be  desired. 
They  are  indeed  disciplinary.  The  mind 
takes  fibre,  facility,  strength,  adaptability, 
certainty  of  touch  from  handling  them, 
when  the  teacher  knows  his  art  and  their 
power.  But  they  are  disciplinary  only 
because  of  their  definiteness  and  their 
established  method :  and  they  take  their 
determinateness  from  their  age  and  perfec- 
tion. It  is  their  age  and  completeness 


Princeton  for  the  Nation  s  Service 

that  render  them  so  serviceable  and  so 
suitable  for  the  first  processes  of  education. 
By  their  means  the  boy  is  informed  of  the 
bodies  of  knowledge  which  are  not  experi- 
mental but  settled,  definitive,  fundamental. 
This  is  the  stock  upon  which  time  out  of 
mind  all  the  thoughtful  world  has  traded. 
These  have  been  food  of  the  mind  for 
long  generations. 

It  is  in  this  view  of  the  matter  that  we 
get  an  explanation  of  the  fact  that  the 
classical  languages  of  antiquity  afford  bet- 
ter discipline  and  are  a  more  indispensable 
means  of  culture  than  any  language  of  our 
own  day  except  the  language,  the  intimate 
language,  of  our  own  thought,  which  is  for 
us  universal  coin  of  exchange  in  the  intel- 
lectual world  and  must  have  its  values 
determined  to  a  nicety  before  we  pay  it 
out.  No  modern  language  is  definitive, 
classically  made  up.  Modern  tongues, 
moreover,  carry  the  modern  babel  of 
voices.  The  thoughts  they  utter  fluctuate 
and  change  ;  the  phrases  they  speak  alter 
and  are  dissolved  with  every  change  of 


Princeton  for  the  Nation's  Service 

current  in  modern  thought  or  impulse. 
They  have  had,  first  or  last,  the  same  sat- 
urations of  thought  that  our  own  language 
has  had ;  they  carry  the  same  atmosphere  ; 
in  traversing  their  pleasant  territory,  we 
see  only  different  phases  of  our  own 
familiar  world,  the  world  of  our  own  expe- 
rience ;  and,  valuable  as  it  is  to  have  this 
various  view  of  the  world  we  live  in  and 
send  our  minds  upon  their  travels  up  and 
down  the  modern  age,  it  is  not  funda- 
mental, it  is  not  an  indispensable  first  pro- 
cess of  training.  It  can  be  postponed. 
The  classical  literatures  give  us,  in  tones 
and  with  an  authentic  accent  we  can  no- 
where else  hear,  the  thoughts  of  an  age  we 
cannot  visit.  They  contain  airs  of  a  time 
not  our  own,  unlike  our  own,  and  yet  its 
foster  parent.  To  these  things  was  the 
modern  thinking  world  first  bred.  In 
them  speaks  a  time  na'ive,  pagan,  an  early 
morning  day  when  men  looked  upon  the 
earth  while  it  was  fresh,  untrodden  by 
crowding  thought,  an  age  when  the  mind 
moved,  as  it  were,  without  prepossessions 


Princeton  for  the  Nation  s  Service 

and  with  an  unsophisticated,  childlike 
curiosity,  a  season  apart  during  which  those 
seats  upon  the  Mediterranean  seem  the 
first  seats  of  thoughtful  men.  We  shall 
not  anywhere  else  get  a  substitute  for  it. 
The  modern  mind  has  been  built  upon 
that  culture  and  there  is  no  authentic 
equivalent. 

Drill  in  the  mathematics  stands  in  the 
same  category  with  familiar  knowledge  of 
the  thought  and  speech  of  classical  antiq- 
uity, because  in  them  also  we  get  the  life- 
long accepted  discipline  of  the  race,  the 
processes  of  pure  reasoning  which  lie  at 
once  at  the  basis  of  science  and  at  the 
basis  of  philosophy,  grounded  upon  obser- 
vation and  physical  fact  and  yet  abstract 
and  of  the  very  stuff  of  the  essential  pro- 
cesses of  the  mind,  a  bridge  between  reason 
and  nature.  Here,  too,  as  in  the  classics, 
is  a  definitive  body  of  knowledge  and  of 
reason,  a  discipline  which  has  been  made 
test  of  through  long  generations,  a  method 
of  thought  which  has  in  all  ages  steadied, 
perfected,  enlarged,  strengthened,  and  given 


Princeton  for  the  Nation  s  Service 

precision  to  the  powers  of  the  mind. 
Mathematical  drill  is  an  introduction  of 
the  boy's  mind  to  the  most  definitely  set- 
tled rational  experiences  of  the  world. 

I  shall  attempt  no  proof  that  English 
also  is  of  the  fundamental  group  of  stud- 
ies. You  will  not  require  me  to  argue 
that  no  man  has  been  made  free  of  the 
world  of  thought  who  does  not  know  the 
literature,  the  idiomatic  flavor,  the  discrim- 
inative and  masterful  use  of  his  own 
tongue. 

But,  if  we  cannot  doubt  that  these  great 
studies  are  fundamental,  neither  can  we 
doubt  that  the  circle  of  fundamental  studies 
has  widened  in  our  day  and  that  education, 
even  general  education,  has  been  extended 
to  new  boundaries.  And  that  chiefly  be- 
cause science  has  had  its  credentials  ac- 
cepted as  of  the  true  patriciate  of  learning. 
It  is  as  necessary  that  the  lad  should  be  in- 
ducted into  the  thinking  of  the  modern  time 
as  it  is  that  he  should  be  carefully  grounded 
in  the  old,  accepted  thought  which  has 
stood  test  from  age  to  age ;  and  the  thought 
26 


Princeton  for  the  Nation  s  Service 

of  the  modern  time  is  based  upon  science. 
It  is  only  a  question  of  choice  in  a  vast 
field.  Special  developments  of  science,  the 
parts  which  lie  in  controversy,  the  parts 
which  are  as  yet  but  half  built  up  by  ex- 
periment and  hypothesis,  do  not  constitute 
the  proper  subject  matter  of  general  edu- 
cation. For  that  you  need,  in  the  field 
of  science  as  in  every  other  field,  the  bod- 
ies of  knowledge  which  are  most  defini- 
tively determined  and  which  are  most  fun- 
damental. Undoubtedly  the  fundamental 
sciences  are  physics,  chemistry,  and  biology. 
Physics  and  chemistry  afford  a  systematic 
body  of  knowledge  as  abundant  for  in- 
struction, as  definitive  almost,  as  mathe- 
matics itself;  and  biology,  young  as  it  is, 
has  already  supplied  us  with  a  scheme  of 
physical  life  which  lifts  its  study  to  the 
place  of  a  distinctive  discipline.  These 
great  bodies  of  knowledge  claim  their  place 
at  the  foundation  of  liberal  training  not 
merely  for  our  information,  but  because 
they  afford  us  direct  introduction  into  the 
most  essential  analytical  and  rational  pro- 
ay 


Princeton  for  the  Nation 's  Service 

cesses  of  scientific  study,  impart  penetra- 
tion, precision,  candor,  openness  of  mind, 
and  afford  the  close  contacts  of  concrete 
thinking.  And  there  stand  alongside  of 
these  geology  and  astronomy,  whose  part 
in  general  culture,  aside  from  their  con- 
nection with  physics,  mechanics,  and  chem- 
istry, is  to  apply  to  the  mind  the  stimula- 
tion which  comes  from  being  brought  into 
the  presence  and  in  some  sort  into  the 
comprehension  of  stupendous,  systema- 
tized physical  fact, — from  seeing  nature  in 
the  mass  and  system  of  her  might  and 
structure.  These,  too,  are  essential  parts 
of  the  wide  scheme  which  the  college  must 
plot  out.  And  when  we  have  added  to 
these  the  manifold  discipline  of  philoso- 
phy, the  indispensable  instructions  of  his- 
tory, and  the  enlightenments  of  economic 
and  political  study,  and  to  these  the  mod- 
ern languages  which  are  the  tools  of 
scholarship,  we  stand  confused.  How  are 
we  to  marshal  this  host  of  studies  within  a 
common  plan  which  shall  not  put  the  pu- 
pil out  of  breath  ? 

28 


Princeton  for  the  Nation  s  Service 

No  doubt  we  must  make  choice  among 
them,  and  suffer  the  pupil  himself  to  make 
choice.  But  the  choice  that  we  make  must 
be  the  chief  choice,  the  choice  the  pupil 
makes  the  subordinate  choice.  Since  he 
cannot  in  the  time  at  his  disposal  go  the 
grand  tour  of  accepted  modern  knowledge, 
we  who  have  studied  the  geography  of 
learning  and  who  have  observed  several 
generations  of  men  attempt  the  journey, 
must  instruct  him  how  in  a  brief  space  he 
may  see  most  of  the  world,  and  he  must 
choose  only  which  one  of  several  tours  that 
we  may  map  out  he  will  take.  Else  there 
is  no  difference  between  young  men  and 
old,  between  the  novice  and  the  man  of 
experience,  in  fundamental  matters  of 
choice.  We  must  supply  the  synthesis  and 
must  see  to  it  that,  whatever  group  of 
studies  the  student  selects,  it  shall  at  least 
represent  the  round  whole,  contain  all  the 
elements  of  modern  knowledge,  and  be  it- 
self a  complete  circle  of  general  subjects. 
Princeton  can  never  have  any  uncertainty 
of  view  on  that  point. 
29 


Princeton  for  the  Nation's  Service 

And  that  not  only  because  we  conceive 
it  to  be  our  business  to  give  a  general,  lib- 
eralizing, enlightening  training  to  men  who 
do  not  mean  to  go  on  to  any  special  work 
by  which  they  may  make  men  of  science 
or  scholars  of  themselves  or  skilled  prac- 
titioners of  a  learned  profession,  but  also 
because  we  would  create  a  right  atmosphere 
for  special  study.  Critics  of  education  have 
recently  given  themselves  great  concern 
about  over-specialization.  The  only  spe- 
cialists about  whom,  I  think,  the  thought- 
ful critic  need  give  himself  serious  anxiety 
are  the  specialists  who  have  never  had  any 
general  education  in  which  to  give  their 
special  studies  wide  rootage  and  nour- 
ishment. The  true  American  university 
seems  to  me  to  get  its  best  characteristic, 
its  surest  guarantee  of  sane  and  catholic 
learning,  from  the  presence  at  its  very 
heart  of  a  college  of  liberal  arts.  Its  vital 
union  with  the  college  gives  it,  it  seems  to 
me,  the  true  university  atmosphere,  a  per- 
vading sense  of  the  unity  and  unbroken 
circle  of  learning, — not  so  much  because  of 
30 


Princeton  for  the  Nation  s  Service 

the  presence  of  a  great  body  of  undergrad- 
uates in  search  of  general  training  (because 
until  these  youngsters  get  what  they  seek 
they  create  ideals  more  by  their  lack  than 
by  their  achievement),  as  because  of  the 
presence  of  a  great  body  of  teachers  whose 
life-work  it  is  to  find  the  general  outlooks 
of  knowledge  and  give  vision  of  them 
every  day  from  quiet  rooms  which,  while 
they  talk,  shall  seem  to  command  all  the 
prospects  of  the  wide  world. 

I  should  dread  to  see  those  who  guide 
special  study  and  research  altogether  ex- 
cused from  undergraduate  instruction, 
should  dread  to  see  them  withdraw  them- 
selves altogether  from  the  broad  and 
general  survey  of  the  subjects  of  which 
they  have  sought  to  make  themselves  mas- 
ters. I  should  equally  despair  of  seeing 
any  student  made  a  truly  serviceable  spe- 
cialist who  had  not  turned  to  his  specialty 
in  the  spirit  of  a  broad  and  catholic  learn- 
ing,— unless,  indeed,  he  were  one  of  those 
rare  spirits  who  once  and  again  appear 
amongst  us,  whose  peculiar,  individual 


Princeton  for  the  Nation's  Service 

privilege  it  is  to  have  safe  vision  of  but  a 
little  segment  of  truth  and  yet  keep  his 
poise  and  reason.  It  is  not  the  education 
that  concentrates  that  is  to  be  dreaded,  but 
the  education  that  narrows, — that  is  narrow 
from  the  first.  I  should  wish  to  see  every 
student  made,  not  a  man  of  his  task,  but  a 
man  of  the  world,  whatever  his  world  may 
be.  If  it  be  the  world  of  learning,  then  he 
should  be  a  conscious  and  a  broad-minded 
citizen  of  it.  If  it  be  the  world  of  letters, 
his  thought  should  run  free  upon  the  whole 
field  of  it.  If  it  be  the  world  of  affairs,  he 
should  move  amidst  affairs  like  a  man  of 
thought.  What  we  seek  in  education  is 
full  liberation  of  the  faculties,  and  the  man 
who  has  not  some  surplus  of  thought  and 
energy  to  expend  outside  the  narrow  circle 
of  his  own  task  and  interest  is  a  dwarfed, 
uneducated  man.  We  judge  the  range  and 
excellence  of  every  man's  abilities  by  their 
play  outside  the  task  by  which  he  earns  his 
livelihood.  Does  he  merely  work,  or  does 
he  also  look  abroad  and  plan  ?  Does  he, 
at  the  least,  enlarge  the  thing  he  handles  ? 


Princeton  for  the  Nation's  Service 

No  task,  rightly  done,  is  truly  private.  It 
is  part  of  the  world's  work.  The  subtle 
and  yet  universal  connections  of  things  are 
what  the  truly  educated  man,  be  he  man  of 
science,  man  of  letters,  or  statesman,  must 
keep  always  in  his  thought,  if  he  would  fit 
his  work  to  the  work  of  the  world.  His 
adjustment  is  as  important  as  his  energy. 

We  mean,  so  soon  as  our  generous 
friends  have  arranged  their  private  finances 
in  such  a  way  as  to  enable  them  to  release 
for  our  use  enough  money  for  the  purpose, 
to  build  a  notable  graduate  college.  I  say 
<£  build  "  because  it  will  be  not  only  a  body 
of  teachers  and  students  but  also  a  college 
of  residence,  where  men  shall  live  together 
in  the  close  and  wholesome  comradeships 
of  learning.  We  shall  build  it,  not  apart, 
but  as  nearly  as  may  be  at  the  very  heart, 
the  geographical  heart,  of  the  university ; 
and  its  comradeships  shall  be  for  young 
men  and  old,  for  the  novice  as  well  as  for 
the  graduate.  It  will  constitute  but  a  single 
term  in  the  scheme  of  coordination  which 
is  our  ideal.  The  windows  of  the  graduate 

33 


Princeton  for  the  Nation's  Service 

college  must  open  straight  upon  the  walks 
and  quadrangles  and  lecture  halls  of  the 
studium  generate. 

In  our  attempt  to  escape  the  pedantry 
and  narrowness  of  the  old  fixed  curriculum 
we  have,  no  doubt,  gone  so  far  as  to  be  in 
danger  of  losing  the  old  ideals.  Our 
utilitarianism  has  carried  us  so  far  afield 
that  we  are  in  a  fair  way  to  forget  the  real 
utilities  of  the  mind.  No  doubt  the  old, 
purely  literary  training  made  too  much  of 
the  development  of  mere  taste,  mere  deli- 
cacy of  perception,  but  our  modern  train- 
ing makes  too  little.  We  pity  the  young 
child  who,  ere  its  physical  life  has  come  to 
maturity,  is  put  to  some  task  which  will 
dwarf  and  narrow  it  into  a  mere  mechanic 
tool.  We  know  that  it  needs  first  its  free 
years  in  the  sunlight  and  fresh  air,  its  irre- 
sponsible youth.  And  yet  we  do  not 
hesitate  to  deny  to  the  young  mind  its 
irresponsible  years  of  mere  development 
in  the  free  air  of  general  studies.  We 
have  too  ignorantly  served  the  spirit  of  the 
age, — have  made  no  bold  and  sanguine  at- 

34 


Princeton  for  the  Nation' s  Service 

tempt  to  instruct  and  lead  it.  Its  call  is 
for  efficiency,  but  not  for  narrow,  purblind 
efficiency.  Surely  no  other  age  ever  had 
tasks  which  made  so  shrewdly  for  the  test- 
ing of  the  general  powers  of  the  mind. 
No  sort  of  knowledge,  no  sort  of  training 
of  the  perceptions  and  the  facility  of  the 
mind  could  come  amiss  to  the  modern 
man  of  affairs  or  the  modern  student.  A 
general  awakening  of  the  faculties,  and 
then  a  close  and  careful  adaptation  to  some 
special  task  is  the  programme  of  mere  pru- 
dence for  every  man  who  would  succeed. 

And  there  are  other  things  besides  mate- 
rial success  with  which  we  must  supply  our 
generation.  It  must  be  supplied  with  men 
who  care  more  for  principles  than  for 
money,  for  the  right  adjustments  of  life 
than  for  the  gross  accumulations  of  profit. 
The  problems  that  call  for  sober  thought- 
fulness  and  mere  devotion  are  as  pressing 
as  those  which  call  for  practical  efficiency. 
We  are  here  not  merely  to  release  the 
faculties  of  men  for  their  own  use,  but  also 
to  quicken  their  social  understanding,  in- 

35 


Princeton  for  the  Nation's  Service 

struct  their  consciences,  and  give  them  the 
catholic  vision  of  those  who  know  their 
just  relations  to  their  fellow  men.  Here 
in  America,  for  every  man  touched  with 
nobility,  for  every  man  touched  with  the 
spirit  of  our  institutions,  social  service  is 
the  high  law  of  duty,  and  every  American 
university  must  square  its  standards  by 
that  law  or  lack  its  national  title.  It  is 
serving  the  nation  to  give  men  the  enlight- 
enments of  a  general  training ;  it  is  serv- 
ing the  nation  to  equip  fit  men  for  thor- 
ough scientific  investigation  and  for  the 
tasks  of  exact  scholarship,  for  science  and 
scholarship  carry  the  truth  forward  from 
generation  to  generation  and  give  the  cer- 
tain touch  of  knowledge  to  the  processes 
of  life.  But  the  whole  service  demanded 
is  not  rendered  until  something  is  added 
to  the  mere  training  of  the  undergraduate 
and  the  mere  equipment  of  the  investi- 
gator, something  ideal  and  of  the  very 
spirit  of  all  action.  The  final  synthesis  of 
learning  is  in  philosophy.  You  shall  most 
clearly  judge  the  spirit  of  a  university  if 
36 


Princeton  for  the  Nation  s  Service 

you  judge  it  by  the  philosophy  it  teaches  ; 
and  the  philosophy  of  conduct  is  what 
every  wise  man  should  wish  to  derive  from 
his  knowledge  of  the  thoughts  and  the 
affairs  of  the  generations  that  have  gone 
before  him.  We  are  not  put  into  this 
world  to  sit  still  and  know;  we  are  put 
into  it  to  act. 

It  is  true  that  in  order  to  learn  men  must 
for  a  little  while  withdraw  from  action, 
must  seek  some  quiet  place  of  remove 
from  the  bustle  of  affairs,  where  their 
thoughts  may  run  clear  and  tranquil,  and 
the  heats  of  business  be  for  the  time  put 
off;  but  that  cloistered  refuge  is  no  place 
to  dream  in.  It  is  a  place  for  the  first 
conspectus  of  the  mind,  for  a  thoughtful 
poring  upon  the  map  of  life ;  and  the 
boundaries  which  should  emerge  to  the 
mind's  eye  are  not  more  the  intellectual 
than  the  moral  boundaries  of  thought  and 
action.  I  do  not  see  how  any  university 
can  afford  such  an  outlook  if  its  teachings 
be  not  informed  with  the  spirit  of  religion, 
and  that  the  religion  of  Christ,  and  with 

37 


Princeton  for  the  Nation  s  Service 

the  energy  of  a  positive  faith.  The  argu- 
ment for  efficiency  in  education  can  have 
no  permanent  validity  if  the  efficiency 
sought  be  not  moral  as  well  as  intellectual. 
The  ages  of  strong  and  definite  moral 
impulse  have  been  the  ages  of  achieve- 
ment; and  the  moral  impulses  which 
have  lifted  highest  have  come  from  Chris- 
tian peoples, — the  moving  history  of  our 
own  nation  were  proof  enough  of  that. 
Moral  efficiency  is,  in  the  last  analysis,  the 
fundamental  argument  for  liberal  culture. 
A  merely  literary  education,  got  out  of 
books  and  old  literatures,  is  a  poor  thing 
enough  if  the  teacher  stick  at  grammatical 
and  syntactical  drill ;  but  if  it  be  indeed 
an  introduction  into  the  thoughtful  labors 
of  men  of  all  generations  it  may  be  made 
a  prologue  to  the  mind's  emancipation; 
its  emancipation  from  narrowness, — from 
narrowness  of  sympathy,  of  perception,  of 
motive,  of  purpose,  and  of  hope.  And 
the  deep  fountains  of  Christian  teaching 
are  its  most  refreshing  springs. 

I   have   said   already,  let  me  say  again, 

38 


Princeton  for  the  Nation  s  Service 

that  in  such  a  place  as  this  we  have 
charge,  not  of  men's  fortunes,  but  of  their 
spirits.  This  is  not  the  place  in  which  to 
teach  men  their  specific  tasks,  except  their 
tasks  be  those  of  scholarship  and  investi- 
gation ;  it  is  the  place  in  which  to  teach 
them  the  relations  which  all  tasks  bear  to 
the  work  of  the  world.  Some  men  there 
are  who  are  condemned  to  learn  only  the 
technical  skill  by  which  they  are  to  live ; 
but  these  are  not  the  men  whose  privilege 
it  is  to  come  to  a  university.  University 
men  ought  to  hold  themselves  bound  to 
walk  the  upper  roads  of  usefulness  which 
run  along  the  ridges  and  command  views 
of  the  general  fields  of  life.  This  is  why 
I  believe  general  training,  with  no  particu- 
lar occupation  in  view,  to  be  the  very  heart 
and  essence  of  university  training,  and  the 
indispensable  foundation  of  every  special 
development  of  knowledge  or  of  aptitude 
that  is  to  lift  a  man  to  his  profession  or  a 
scholar  to  his  function  of  investigation. 

I  have  studied  the  history  of  America ; 
I  have  seen  her  grow  great  in  the  paths  of 

39 


Princeton  for  the  Nation' 's  Service 

liberty  and  of  progress  by  following  after 
great  ideals.  Every  concrete  thing  that 
she  has  done  has  seemed  to  rise  out  of 
some  abstract  principle,  some  vision  of 
the  mind.  Her  greatest  victories  have 
been  the  victories  of  peace  and  of  human- 
ity. And  in  days-  quiet  and  troubled  alike 
Princeton  has  stood  for  the  nation's  ser- 
vice, to  produce  men  and  patriots.  Her 
national  tradition  began  with  John  With- 
erspoon,  the  master,  and  James  Madison, 
the  pupil,  and  has  not  been  broken  until 
this  day.  I  do  not  know  what  the  friends 
of  this  sound  and  tested  foundation  may 
have  in  store  to  build  upon  it ;  but  what- 
ever they  add  shall  be  added  in  that  spirit 
and  with  that  conception  of  duty.  There 
is  no  better  way  to  build  up  learning  and 
increase  power.  A  new  age  is  before  us, 
in  which,  it  would  seem,  we  must  lead  the 
world.  No  doubt  we  shall  set  it  an  exam- 
ple unprecedented  not  only  in  the  magni- 
tude and  telling  perfection  of  our  indus- 
tries and  arts,  but  also  in  the  splendid 
scale  and  studied  detail  of  our  university 
40 


Princeton  for  the  Nation  s  Service 

establishments :  the  spirit  of  the  age  will 
lift  us  to  every  great  enterprise.  But  the 
ancient  spirit  of  sound  learning  will  also 
rule  us ;  we  shall  demonstrate  in  our  lec- 
ture rooms  again  and  again,  with  increasing 
volume  of  proof,  the  old  principles  that 
have  made  us  free  and  great ;  reading  men 
shall  read  here  the  chastened  thoughts  that 
have  kept  us  young  and  shall  make  us 
pure ;  the  school  of  learning  shall  be  the 
school  of  memory  and  of  ideal  hope  ;  and 
the  men  who  spring  from  our  loins  shall 
take  their  lineage  from  the  founders  of  the 
republic. 


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